Future of Mobility

Abstract

The general concept and meaning of mobility have been changing and evolving since the start of mankind. Mobility has become more than getting from point A to B. Mobility is changing from solely being a means to reach a specific goal into being a goal on its own. PwC also realized this. However, at this moment PwC has no vision to do something with this mobility paradigm shift for themselves or their clients. This graduation project focused on the development this mobility vision for PwC and a design based on this vision. This is formulated in the assignment: Design a meaningful product (- service system) that enables, facilitates or improves personal mobility, in the Netherlands, by 2035.

Through conducting research, I created a future context. The future context is composed out of twelve cases in which people are unable to take personal responsibility for their mobility. It prevents them from creating favorable conditions in which they and others are able to create a better self. Together with PwC I decided to focus on the increasing socio-economic inequality case because, positively contributing to that case is most in line with PwC’s own vision. The selected case is about people are not able to take personal responsibly to effectively use their mobility to grow their prosperity or that of others, due to new (global) external factors.

I created a mobility vision for PwC that is focused at delivering a positive contribution to the above-mentioned problem. The goal of the vision is: PwC wants people to responsibly use their short-term mobility to create a better self. Essential is that the success of it depends on the increase and/or improvement in short- and long-term socio-economic prospects for themselves and others too. Moreover, these prospectives should honor the creation of a better world for flora and fauna. PwC can achieve this by: Creating with people’s mobility surplus personal interdependencies, between people’s short- and long-term socio-economic prospects.

Flock has been created to realize this vision. Flock is a mobility system, owned by the Dutch government, which uses road pricing to charge users based on their departure and arrival location of their journey. Users traveling from a geographical area, which is valuable for society, to another area which is less valuable will be charged less than vice versa. Flock calls these geographical ‘mobility epicentres’. This leads to more socio-economic equality which is more uniformly spread in the Netherlands on the long-term. Additionally, Flock offers people the ability to participate in a nation-wide de-centralized mobility network. People participate by investing in it with a privately-owned product that is capable of providing mobility. This is called ‘mobility virtualization’. If done successfully, the user will be granted access to means that are invested by others in the network that provide mobility. This can be in the same or different mobility epicenters. The government is in possession of a desktop application and the user, mostly Dutch citizens, are in possession of a smartphone app to interact with the mobility system.